1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to server based image processing as a function of the image viewing client device.
2. Description of Related Art
A user typically likes to view a document on a handheld wireless client device before deciding to print, facsimile or e-mail the document. More and more client devices (“clients”) allow the display of small images on the client display. Well known example clients are cell phones having color display capability, but also other small form factor display clients are available, such as, for example personal digital assistants (PDAs), e.g., BLACKBERRY RIM™, copier user interfaces, and the like. Common display approaches for these client devices is the use of client software to enable viewing of images, such as, for example, JPEG2000 decoder. A handheld wireless device, such as, for example, a PDA, a cell phone or a miniaturized computing device, has relatively little screen surface area for viewing documents, as well as little memory for storing the document or the applications for all the document formats a user can conceivably access and view.
Current solutions either restrict the document types that can be viewed on handheld client devices, e.g., web pages with graphics interchange format (GIF) files, show only the ASCII text of the document, provide viewers for a small set of document types, or do not provide viewers at all. Increasing the number of viewable documents by adding client side viewers quickly runs into resource problems. In addition, transmitting large application files makes the system impractical considering transfer times and costs.
In client-server situations, a large amount of the actual processing work is generally decentralized from the server and provided to the client in order to reduce server load. For mobile or other small clients, this approach includes several disadvantages. One disadvantage is that the computational capacity on the client side is rather small. Another disadvantage is that, given the vast number of client types in use, performing software updates, software downloads and the like are difficult or impractical.
These disadvantages can be understood considering a simple example. When viewing documents, such as issued patents, Adobe® PDF is a common format, yet, client side viewers have to be installed in order to be able to view the documents. Additionally, a PDF is transmitted in its entirety to the client in order to view the document, often exceeding 1 MB for many patent documents. If no client software is installed, the documents can not be viewed. However, installing viewers for all potential application will, in general, exceed the client capability and transferring entire application files when only pieces need to be viewed will in general exceed reasonable transfer times and costs.